When Jimmy Carter was elected, my Mother rationalized “…Well – at least we now have one who doesn’t have an accent.”
Recently I have spent some time watching interviews with the late Shelby Foote. I particularly liked the graduation ( “commencement”) address. Shelby’s voice MADE the Burns’ PBS series on the Civil War.
All Southern Americans wrestle with the race issue. Mr. Foote is a peer of great delta writers. All have dealt with the past. Or tried to.
The link below, beginning at about minute twelve, caught my attention. The moderator, who is Black, solicits Mr. Foote’s comments on the issue.
Almost with deep anguish Shelby started with “…it is difficult to talk about”, or a similar “…you had to know what it was like back then.”
As if talking to himself. he tried to defend his beloved South while unable to justify the horrors.
The recent video PICK UP YOUR BED AND WALK revisits Fike High School’s three state football championships. Russell Rawlings’ book, CYCLONE COUNTY, also explores this scene (Wilson, NC –late 1960’s ).
I wrote PLAY IS WHERE LIFE IS about twenty years ago. The link below includes a chapter on Wilson and Eastern North Carolina, and Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College ), with many comments on this same period of time and some later.
On the link below I have listed several “tales”. I think this is the best chapter I have written, mainly because of all the area’s characters.
Tom Parham: “ In the 70’s a lawyer opined that the then ITCA could limit international college tennis players . The membership voted to do so. The “big boys” threatened to withdraw their membership. Others advised a quota would be found illegal. There was no litigation.
Given the current conservative bent , would now be a time to “screw up some courage”?
Note : Coaches and Athletics Directors aren’t the sole input (IDS 1357 ).
“GORILLA BUREACRATS?” : NATIONALcaa, UNITED STATES ta, USpta, NATIONALfhsaa. Global sports.
[Verse 1] Well, if you’re lookin’ for purpose in the current circus If you’re seekin’ respect and attention If you’re in need of a gig that’ll make you feel big Come with me and put some folks in detention
[Verse 2] Just last week was kind of tough, I put a kid in cuffs I zip-tied a lady to a van We can sneak around town, hunt workin’ folks down I hear they got a great benefit plan
[Chorus] Join ICE, boy, ain’t it nice? Join ICE, take my advice If you’re lackin’ control and authority Come with me and hunt down minorities Join ICE
[Verse 4] I got picked on at school, I never felt that cool There’s a hole in my soul that just a-rages All the ladies turned me down, and I felt like a clown But will you look at me now, I’m puttin’ folks in cages
[Chorus] At ICE, we’re respectin’ power Join ICE, I hear they got great hours There’s a sign-on bonus of 50 grand They’re in need of you needin’ to feel like a man Join ICE
Look at ’em go!
[Verse 5] Well, if you’re lookin’ for purpose in the current circus If you’re seekin’ respect and attention If you’re in need of a gig that’ll make you feel big Come with me and put some folks in detention
[Verse 6] See I failed the academy, the cops weren’t havin’ me The Army didn’t sound that fun So I found me a paramilitary operation That was keen to hand me a gun
[Chorus] Join ICE, boy, ain’t it nice? Join ICE, take my advice If you’re lackin’ control and authority Come with me and hunt down minorities Join ICE
Fleming will forever be remembered as the Newsweek reporter who was photographed after being severely beaten in the Watts riots of 1966. In this memoir, he recounts the long road that led to his reporting on race relations and the incendiary social issues that exploded that day. He was born in 1927 in a poor, bleak North Carolina community and raised in an orphanage when his mother could no longer afford to take care of him. Fleming left college early to begin life as a reporter with a small-town ( WILSON, NC ) newspaper, covering the police beat with a cynical police chief who mistreated blacks. It was Fleming’s first hint that, having grown up in an orphanage, his sympathies were with the underdog. He went on to cover the turbulent racial changes in the South, including James Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Medgar Evers. In this stunning memoir, Fleming offers the perspective of a poor white boy witnessing the racial turbulence that changed the U.S. Vanessa Bush
Review “A harrowing and brutally honest account of Fleming’s experiences on all sides of the civil rights battle.” — Publishers Weekly, April 25, 2005
“A rich and absorbing book, a window into a time and place that defined America.” — Washington Post Book World, June 12, 2005
“Incredibly rich in history, in bravery and brutality, Karl Fleming’s Son of the Rough South is so beautifully written.” — Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies
“It makes for a tense, harrowing, utterly gripping journey.” — Newsweek, May 23, 2005
“Karl Fleming knows how to tell a story.” — Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis
“Their story will take the reader on a trip not soon forgotten of spirits unwilling to be broken.” — San Antonio Express-News, June 19, 2005.
“a vivid, often painful memoir…” — David Halberstam
“offers vibrant portraits of the most harrowing incidents of [the civil rights]…” — Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005
…recovers for us a brace period of our recent history, and delivers it with all the sharp…edges perfectly intact. — Barton Chronicle, October 2005
FFFlemingsssssssss craft soars to a level of artful elegance with blunt, unsentimental language full of casual grace notes — The Nation, August 15 and 22, 2005.
In 2015 I put together a script/photo booklet, NEARLY FIFTY, described below “
HISTORY
(From Play is where Life is by Tom Parham)
Wilsonians provided me with a lot of laughs. I guess it’s just out there, but Wilson I think is special in the humor world. No one was better than Stephen Earl “Country” Boykin.
Our best joint venture was the “River Trip”. It began with a new event in 1967: The Super Bowl. We hosted clients of Earl’s Sportsville Sporting Goods Store at Happy Valley Golf course. We held the beer blast in the “Sugar Shack”in the middle of the course. Mostly coaches from Wilson, only one got arrested. He drove his Pontiac up the downtown Courthouse steps.
In 1968 Earl bought a “camp”to duck hunt. It was located on Back Creek, near rural Bath, NC.
We held the “River Trip” there for about a dozen years. Then we moved to my beach house at Emerald Isle, NC. We have run over one duck, as far as duck huntng goes. The appendix-Summarizes some highlights. We don’t want you to know everything but this s”chronology” will give you the “gist”.
Most of us were from Wilson, NC , home of Atlantic Christian College, now Barton College. And from eastern NC. Barton recently posted THE BARTON PROJECT which similarly recalls the “neighborhood” from 1960 until 2024.
“The Barton Project” is available through Hackney Library’s Special Collections. For access or more information, visit https://barton.libguides.com/special_collections/home or reach out to technology and grants librarian Naija Speight at nispeight@barton.edu.
Phillips Seafoood ( Swansboro, NC ) has a sign in the front window: “Local As It Gets”!
The Little Green Book of Tennis 